Before entering on the narrative of those terrible scenes of wrong and blood, in which the Government of the United States, driven to desperation by our successful resistance to its outrages, broke through every restraint of the Constitution, of national law, of justice, and of humanity, it is proper that we should sum up the hostile acts and usurpations committed during the first year.
Our people had been declared to be combinations of insurrectionists, and more than 150,000 men had been called to arms to invade our territory. Our forts were blockaded for the destruction of our regular commerce. We had been threatened with denunciation as pirates if we molested a vessel of the United States, and some of our citizens had been confined in cells to await the punishment of piracy. One of our States was rent asunder, and a new State constructed out of one of the fragments. Every proposition for a peaceful solution of pending issues had been spurned. An inhuman warfare had been waged against our peaceful citizens; their dwellings had been burned, and their crops destroyed. A law had been passed imposing a penalty of forfeiture on the owner of any faithful slave who gave military and naval service to the Confederacy, and forbidding military commanders to interfere for the restoration of fugitives. The United States Government had refused to agree to an exchange of prisoners, and suffered those we had captured to languish in captivity. They had maligned us in every court in Europe to defeat our efforts to obtain a recognition from foreign powers. The Federal Government had seized a portion of the members of the Legislature of one State and confined them in a distant military prison, merely because they were thought to sympathize with us, although they had not committed any overt act. It had refused all the propositions of another State for a peaceful neutrality, invaded her soil, and seized important positions where not even a disturbance of the peace had occurred, and perpetrated the most horrible outrages on her people. It had rejected the most conciliatory terms offered for the sake of peace by the Governor of another State, and claimed for itself an unrestricted right to move and station its troops whenever and wherever its officers might think it to be desirable; and it persisted in its aggressions until the people were involved in conflicts, and a provisional government became necessary for their protection.
Within the Northern States, which professed to be struggling to maintain the Union, the Constitution, its only bond, and the laws made in pursuance of it, were in peaceful, undisputed existence; yet even there the Government ruled with a tyrant’s hand, and the provisions for the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and the personal liberty of the citizen were daily violated, and these sacred rights of man suppressed by military force.
The extent of armed resistance on our part the people of the North were slow to comprehend. They would not realize that their purpose of subjugation would be so resolutely resisted, or that, if persisted in, it must be carried to the extent of bloodshed in sectional war. With them the lust of dominion was stronger than the sense of justice, or of the fraternity of equal rights of the States, which the Union was formed to secure. They were blind, therefore, to palpable results. The division of sentiment in the South on the question of the expediency of immediate secession was mistaken for the existence of a submission party; whereas the division was confined to expediency, and wholly disappeared when our territory was invaded. Then was revealed to all the necessity of defending their homes and liberties against the ruthless assault on both, and then extraordinary unanimity prevailed. Then, as Hamilton and Madison had foreseen, war against the States had effected the deprecated dissolution of the Union.
The policy of subjugation, adopted without provocation, was pressed with a ferocity that disregarded all the laws of civilized warfare. The Government waged war not only with those who bore arms, but with the entire population of the Confederate States. Private houses in isolated retreats were bombarded and burned; grain crops in the field were consumed by the torch; and, when the torch was not applied, careful labor was bestowed to render complete the destruction of every article of use or ornament remaining in the private dwellings after their female inhabitants had fled from the insults of brutal soldiers. A petty war was made on the sick, including women and children, by carefully devised measures to prevent them from obtaining the necessary medicines. Were these the appropriate means by which to execute the law and preserve a voluntary union? Was this a government resting on the consent of the governed?
We could not compensate for our lack of a navy by the usual resort to privateers, as the common incentive to such ventures, the hope of gain, was lacking, from the fact that all foreign ports were closed against our prizes and our own ports blockaded. Nevertheless, as the only alternatives thus left in the circumstances were the burning or bonding of captures, the Confederate Government received applications for letters of marque, and issued them, and there was soon a little fleet afloat composed partly of vessels for which letters of marque had been issued, and partly of vessels that had been bought and fitted out by the Navy Department. They hovered on the coast of the Northern States, capturing and destroying their vessels and filling the enemy with consternation. The President of the United States had declared, by proclamation dated April 19th, 1861, that any person who under the pretended authority of the said (Confederate) States should molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo aboard, “should be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the crime of piracy.” Happily for the United States the threat was not executed; but the failure to carry out the declared purpose was coupled with humiliation, because it was the result of a notice to retaliate as fully as there might need be, to stop such a barbarous practice.
On June 3, 1861, the little schooner Savannah, an old pilot-boat, sailing under a Confederate commission, was captured by the United States brig Perry. The crew were placed in irons and sent to New York. As soon as it was ascertained in Richmond that they were not treated as prisoners of war, I addressed a letter to President Lincoln, dated July 6th, in which it was explicitly stated that, “Painful as will be the necessity, this Government will deal out to the prisoners held by it the same treatment and the same fate as shall be experienced by those captured on the Savannah; and if driven to the terrible necessity of retaliation by your execution of any of the officers or crew of the Savannah, that retaliation will be extended so far as shall be requisite to secure the abandonment of a practice unknown to the warfare of civilized man, and so barbarous as to disgrace the nation which shall be guilty of inaugurating it.” Still later in the year the privateer Jefferson Davis was captured, the captain and crew were brought into Philadelphia, and the captain was tried, found guilty of piracy, and threatened with death. Immediately I instructed General Winder, at Richmond, to select one Federal prisoner of the highest rank, to be confined in a cell appropriate to convicted felons, and treated in all respects as if convicted, and to be held for execution in the same manner as might be adopted for the execution of the prisoner of war in Philadelphia. He was further instructed to select thirteen other prisoners, of the highest rank, to be held in the same manner as hostages for the thirteen prisoners held in New York for trial as pirates. By this course the infamous attempt made by the United States Government to inflict judicial murder was arrested.
The appearance of this little fleet on the ocean made it necessary for the powers of Europe to define their position in relation to the contending powers. Great Britain, adopting a position of neutrality and recognizing both as belligerents, interdicted the armed ships and privateers of both from carrying prizes into the waters of the United Kingdom or its colonies. All the other powers also recognized the Confederate States to be belligerent, and closed their ports against the admission of prizes captured by either belligerent.
Up to the close of 1861 the war enlarged its proportions so as to include new fields, until it then extended from the shores of the Chesapeake to the boundaries of Missouri and Arizona. Sudden calls from the remotest points for military aid were met with promptness enough not only to arrest disaster in the face of superior numbers, but to roll back the tide of invasion on the border.
At the beginning of the war the enemy were possessed of certain strategic points and strong places within the Confederate States. They greatly exceeded us in numbers, in available resources, and in the supplies of war. Their military establishments had been long organized and were complete; the army and navy, once common to both, were in their exclusive possession. To meet all this we had to create not only an army in the face of war itself, but also the military establishment necessary to equip it and place it in the field. The spirit of the volunteers and the patriotism of the people enabled us, under Providence, to grapple successfully with these difficulties. A succession of glorious victories at Bethel, Manassas, Springfield, Lexington, Leesburg, and Belmont checked the invasion of our soil. After seven months of war the enemy had not only failed to extend their occupancy of the soil, but new States and Territories had been added to our Confederacy. Instead of their threatened march of unchecked conquest, the enemy were driven, at more than one point, to assume the defensive, and the Confederate States were relatively much stronger at the end of the year than when the struggle began.
The necessities of the times called into existence new branches of manufacture and stimulated the activity of those previously in operation; and gradually we were becoming independent of the rest of the world for the supply of such military stores and munitions as were indispensable for war.
At an election on November 6, 1861, the chief executive officers of the Provisional Government were unanimously chosen to similar positions in the permanent Government to be inaugurated on the ensuing 22d of February, 1862.